Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey, and Federal President of the Lib Dems, reflecting on the Lib Dem local elections performance, said in a message to all Liberal Democrat councillors:

"Calm consideration of Thursday's election results in England gives Liberal Democrats reason for real satisfaction.

"We now have more councillors in Great Britain (4,745) than at any time in our history except the last three years of the last Conservative government.

"We have our second highest number ever of councillors in London, 317, only 6 short of our previous record election result in 1994, and equal our record number of majority councils, 3.

"We are now the largest party in 4 others - Brent, Camden, Islington and (jointly) Southwark.

"We made gains in 53 councils, and in all parts of England. These included 13 councils where we were the outgoing administration, or part of a shared administration. ( London: Waltham Forest; north; Newcastle,Wirral, and South Lakeland; west: Bristol; east: Cambridge, Harlow, Ipswich, and North East Lincolnshire; south: Eastleigh, and south-east: St.Albans , Three Rivers and Watford).

"And last week we were second in the popular share of the local government vote for only the second time in our history - and with 27% of support equalled our previous best ever results.

"Labour have their lowest number of councillors ever ( 6199). We have closed the gap between the number of Labour councillors and the number of Liberal Democrat councillors to the smallest ever. We are now only 1454 behind.

"Labour are clearly in decline and in leadership turmoil with no early prospect of that ending and no guarantee that a change of leader will improve their fortunes.

"The Conservatives have done well, but still have fewer councillors than in any of the years between 1976 and 1990. There are no Conservatives on 3 of the London boroughs - Haringey, Islington and Newham. There are also no Conservatives on 5 metropolitan borough councils - Gateshead, Knowsley, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

"In by-elections, for the UK parliament and local councils, and in these English council elections, the message is the same.

"We are going forward, we are making progress, and we are more and more important political players across the whole of Britain.

"We plan to be even more influential before, during and after the next general election."

Results highlights:

• Liberal Democrats have achieved a higher vote share than in the General Election a year ago – coming ahead of the Labour Party for only the second time.
• BBC projected national share of the vote: Conservatives 40%, Lib Dems 27%, Labour 26%.
• Liberal Democrats gained Richmond-upon-Thames (from the Conservatives), South Lakeland and St Albans.
• The Liberal Democrats successfully defended overall control in 10 of our 12 councils that were up for re-election, and retained largest party status in the other two.
• We lost overall control of Islington but we are the largest party with 50% of the seats (and will effectively retain control with the casting vote of the Mayor).
• We made a net gain of one council as we also lost Milton Keynes , but we are still the largest party there.
• We also won half the seats in Rochdale and became the largest party on other councils such as Oxford, Brent, Camden and Woking (where we missed overall control by two votes).
• Other significant Lib Dem advances: Haringey 27 (+11), Lewisham 17 (+10), Warrington 25 (+4), Waltham Forest 19 (+4), Oldham 28 (+3), Worthing 14 (+3).
• The Liberal Democrat Mayor of Watford (Dorothy Thornhill) was re-elected with 51% of the vote.
• Liberal Democrats now have overall control of 31 principal local authorities.
• We gained around 350 seats over the last four years – and we made a slight increase on this total on May 4th, taking our total number of Councillors to around 4,800.
• The Conservatives failed to win a single seat in: Liverpool (where they took their entire Shadow Cabinet), Manchester (where they took their Spring Conference), Sheffield (where they gained seats under IDS and Michael Howard), Cambridge (where they lost their last Councillor last night), Oxford, Newcastle and Gateshead.
• Liberal Democrats have been rated as the most trusted party to run the NHS (Lib Dem 30%, Conservative 29%, Labour 28%) and the most party most likely to do most to protect the environment (Lib Dem 29%, Conservative 22%, Labour 17%) - source: ICM polls for BBC and Guardian.